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Austan Goolsbee is a free market economist who Obama would like to put on his Council of Economic Advisers.

He would be an unabashedly free market voice in Obama’s ear. Let me repeat that: He would be a free market economist, giving Obama advice as Obama sets about nationalizing banks, socializing health care, and generally growing the size and scope of government. Would make a difference? Who knows. But he certainly couldn’t hurt.

This entry was posted
on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 5:18 pm by Radley Balko
and is filed under Uncategorized.
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Sounds like a fig leaf to me.One free market guy against all these socialist? Is this so Obama can point to him and say even he agrees with his policies?This group is moving way to fast on far too many fronts.I must say though I’m not shocked.

They don’t want a voice in his government, the point is for Obama to fail. The goals of everything being done by Republicans is politics and nothing else. They have no agenda beyond opposing Obama.

Call into Rush’s program and tell him that “the idiot Senate Republicans are blocking the one free-market economic conservative that Obama has requested just because they can.” See if he’ll make good on his statement that he wants Obama to fail only if success means a left-wing state.

Goolsbee isn’t going to change anything if he’s on Obama’s staff. Know why? Because he’s been one of Obama’s advisors for years. He was the guy who got fired from Obama’s staff during the primary because he got caught taking a trip to Canada to tell the Canadian government that Obama had no interest in changing NAFTA or CAFTA and that all his anti-capitalism rants were just campaign rhetoric.

Obama’s known him for years, and listened to his ideas for years and yet Obama’s still a socialist. So why would having Goolsbee work for him now change anything?

Surely the only reason to even investigate a decision of Obama is out of spite. Those damn Republicans, asking questions, wanting to read bills. How unpatriotic!

Seriously, Radley, what happened? You used to think it was good when Congress took its time to make sure it got things right. Now you blindly accept the assumptions of a partisan hack that OF COURSE anything Republicans do is for evil purposes. Or, in this case, anything we think Republicans might be doing but don’t really know. In fact, the only information the author actually gathered was that John Kyl and Orrin Hatch weren’t aware of any holds.

Find a hold and then you have something, barring the Republicans coming up with a good reason for the hold. Until then, it is just as likely that the delay is due to the Senate just not getting around to it, yet. There’s a lot of pork to pass first and that takes time.

jwh get your head out of your sphincter. This mess started way before Obama was even on the political radar. The Rethuglicans and their catering to the rich caused this. The rich got richer by making the poor poorer. They had the reins of power for many years and at the end, the economy was a shambles. BTW I expect no better from the Demoncrats either. Both are parties, filled with party animals who go to Wash DC to party on the country’s tab. It is the fundamentals of the system which are corrupt and until they are changed, the mess will continue.

Note to Radley: your tone of indignation only make sense if you believe there is some sort of conflict between the Republicans’ stubbornly blocking the nomination of a free-market advocate and their dedication to free markets. Tell me you don’t really believe in Republican dedication to free markets!

One form of intervention that Goolsbee favored was extending mortgage loans to the the uncredit worthy. In a March 29, 2007 op-ed for “The New York Times,” he said that it was good that financial institutions were being prodded to lend money to those who would not meet normal standards for home loans.

Here’s the link to that op-ed. He’s not saying anything at all about prodding banks to lend money to people who don’t meet standards for home loans. He was arguing that it’s could be a bad idea to have stricter standards.

Did anyone read Anne Coulter? She ripped Olberdork about his Ivy league education that he never got. He went to an AG college that isn’t even Indiana!! Before you defend Olberman Balko, get the background info. Olberman is the kid that had to climb the ladder, but he has to shit on every rung as he leaves it just to make himself feel better. But the best part of her article is the practice of snot noses that dwell on things like saying JAG-wire in-stead of ja-GOUR when discussing the team that plays in Jacksonville. Also did you know that Coulter actually turns a very healthy profit just from her blog. Her blog makes money! It might have something to do with the fact that she is an idea person and not a bleeding heart pussy, dope smoker, fat farmer that went to an AG school!

The reason stated was petty! I voted Republican in the past. I agree with the principles of the party. But, most of those in office, now, have no idea what principles are! Their party is split because it no longer represents its ideals of small government and personal freedom. The last thing we need is a vote being delayed because the Democrats took too long, the last time they voted for this position! UUHG!!

Republicans and Democrats are a cancerous lesion on America. Both so caught up in petty one-upsmanship and competition with each other and so deluded that they do not just not accomplish anything in the people’s interest, they openly defy and work against the people. We are either not represented or heinously under-represented thanks to their inability to follow the rules and blind negligence, but we keep voting for them because we’re blinded by the “top two dogs” mentality.

As stated, this will be just one turn on the failure-go-round. It will be misdiagnosed (capitalism, deregulation, free markets). Sheeples will flock to first opportunist telling them it ain’t their fault and we can get back to the before time of rainbows. Then…repeat failure. More people living-by-mailbox.

@#7 John Jenkins: Courtesy of some gentlemen’s agreements that got written into the Senate rules back in the early 60’s, one no longer needs to stand up and read from the phone book for days on end to perform a filibuster. The reason for this was because some of the Senate leaders wanted to be able to actually get something done, so all that needed to happen was for a Senator or two to state to the leadership that it was their intention to filibuster, and the end result was that the Senate would table the issue and move on with business.

The end result of the rules are that it requires 60 votes to achieve cloture, or ending of debate with the intention of having an immediate vote. The net effect is that if the minority party can pull together 41 votes (or in this case 40, as Minnesota still hasn’t decided their Senate fiasco yet), they can continue to extend debate/filibuster the bill. When the rules were written, this wasn’t something that people expected, but the story of brilliant political leaders has often hinged on their ability to find some minutae in the rules and use it as a stick to beat around their opposition. Some bills (such as budgets) can’t be filibustered, and thus require only a simple majority, but the net effect of the cloture rules in the senate is that if you can’t get 3/5 of the Senate to agree that debate should be ended and a vote taken (which of course you don’t want if you’re going to lose your vote), then you can’t get anything passed.

The Republicans have figured this out, and the better they can maintain control over their caucus, the easier they can “filibuster” all of the bills to make Obama and the Dems look bad. All they need is 40 of their 41 caucus members (the stimulus bill shows that they can easily wrangle 38) and/or a few moderate Democrats who are afraid they’ll be picked off by GOP challengers if they toe the Democratic line too much. They realize that if they don’t turn things around in the near future that they’ll be in the political wilderness for a generation, so they’re trying to scuttle Obama’s plans. The problem with the Democrats picking up so many seats in the Senate is that they do so by knocking off the moderate Republicans who are willing to buck the GOP leadership (and I use the term loosely) to vote with the Dems. That ends easy bipartisanship and ends up with a polarized GOP caucus who will be frothing at the mouth because those damn dirty liberals are trying to move a liberal agenda.